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The Age of Discovery, also known as the Age of Exploration, started sometime in the 15th century where it became the bridge from the middle ages to the modern age. During this time the Portuguese pioneered maritime explorations which lead to discoveries and future economic sustainability.

Their purpose was to search for new trading partners, goods, and trade routes. Many of these explorers often lacked funding for ships, supplies, and crew members to get their exploration underway.

Sound familiar?

In many ways Savannah’s entrepreneurs and start-ups are up against the same factors as the explorers of the 15th century. With many disparate parts acting independently, startups frequently face confusion, mis-direction, road blocks, and red tape to moving forward.

So how can we nurture lifestyle entrepreneurs while also building the foundation for high growth industry?
One thought is by leveraging community foundations, assets and three key necessities for entrepreneurship: Education, Space, and Funding.

• Education - The ability to help entrepreneurs organize a strategic business plan and develop their product or service.
• Space - The physical and community environment that offers support for operation and collaboration.
• Funding - The financial and in-kind assistance that allows starts ups to get off the ground.

Through this process a foundational framework can be built for cultivating new opportunities.

It is time to kick off a bigger conversation!

Please stay tuned to the Creative Coast blog to see what is coming next. Here are a few questions for you all to think about.

How can communities redefine the activity of economic development for entrepreneurs?

How can business, design, and innovation be brought together to build a holistic approach to explore new opportunities?

Looking forward to continuing a conversation around the Savannah Start-up community.

R Campbell

 

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If nuclear annihilation ever comes, it’s been said only two things will survive:  cockroaches and entrepreneurs.

As a manager of a technology incubator, I’m often asked by prospects what it takes to be one (no, NOT a cockroach, an entrepreneur; some folks need no coaching on how to be the first).

If you think it means just not wanting to work for others, think again. If you think it means working from home in your pajamas and raiding the refrigerator for a Dove bar whenever you feel like it, think again.

It DOES mean, much like that insidious insect, you are a survivor. It does mean that you have the visionary skills to gain and retain customers to stay in existence. It does mean that you are not afraid to tap the Christmas card list for funding (again and again).

It may mean that if you are developing a retail product or service, you have an explosive personality which will attract customers. It probably means that having a “glass half-full” mentality will get you through endless days and nights of angst and “why do bad things happen to good people?” And it definitely means “Know Thyself.”

Some folks need structure and prefer a safety net. An entrepreneur knows launching a business is a high wire act with no net. Even many corporations and businesses today, no longer stuck in a paternalistic mindset, seek employees with an entrepreneurial attitude.

Smart entrepreneurs have a rabbi or a mentor or a Yoda or an Obi Wan Kenobi … you get the picture. It is far too easy to get caught up in the weeds, the trees and not the forest, the next set of waves and not the ocean. You must, on a regular basis, be able to consult your North Star. Even a Kitchen Cabinet (offer them a cold brew or some hot pizza) of folks you trust, who will just keep you from being too full of yourself, is a good idea.

I can well remember in some of the darkest early days of businesses I started that just going back to the basics, carrying a file card with a few words of wisdom or some simple guidelines and using it like a touchstone, could get me back on track.

SOME TACTICS

$$ - Look for ways to get free media, not paid media. Be sure it is something with a good visual or story “hook” that will excite a news editor or assignment desk drone.

$$ - Sponsor events that align with your ideals, mission, or new customers. Make sure it is a good, natural fit for your product or service. Try to make sure you capture the attendee data base info and then mine it!

$$ - Use blogs like this one to establish a reputation as someone who speaks with passion, authenticity, and relativity. Become known as an “expert” for the right reasons, not just someone who knows more and more about less and less.

And just when you think you know it all . . . call me and I’ll pop your balloon! Be a lifetime learner. And above all Pay It Forward. Oh . . .and wear out, don’t rust out!! That’s all I have for now.

Larry

 

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Sharing:  didn’t we all learn about that in kindergarten?

Well, now we’re adults, and surprise! Sharing is back.

Maybe you’ve used bike sharing in another city. It’s possible you’ve even used AirBnb, or for the more adventurous, Couchsurfing.

These are all examples of what is being called the sharing economy. The basic idea is simple: we’re finding new ways to harness technology so that we can live a little better and fatten our wallets at the same time. AirBnb allows people a way to easily rent out rooms in their own home, or even the whole place. Operations like ThincSavannah (shared office spaces) allow businesses to keep startup costs down while sharing some overhead with others. There are shared kitchens, shared tool co-ops and even shared jets.

But what about day-to-day transportation, you may ask? After all, it’s the second biggest household expense for most Americans. Is it possible to use the sharing concept for cars?

The short answer: yes!

You’ve probably heard of Zipcar, which has been around for over a decade in about thirty cities including Atlanta. Now owned by Avis, the company is essentially a car sharing program for urban residents. The company owns cars and parks them all around a neighborhood. People sign up for monthly or annual membership programs, and use the Zipcars when they need one for an hourly fee.

But wait – there’s more! The newest idea is a mashup of Zipcar with AirBnb. Instead of using Zipcar’s company-owned cars, why not use your neighbor’s? This newest generation of car sharing involves people sharing their own vehicles as part of a pre-approved network, and making money for themselves.

The car sharing company in this case handles all of the critical logistics such as insurance, technology, and member qualifications. The car owner places their car in the system, and collects payment when others drive it. People who need a car simply log in to the system (after an approval process), make a request, and go on their merry way. For those who are car-free, or who wish to be car-free, it creates a convenient, high-tech system available 24/7.

Carsharing.net, a great resource for information, says this:

If you drive less than 7,500 miles a year and you don’t need a car for work every day, car sharing will likely save you thousands of dollars a year, give you greater mobility – and actually reduce pollution.

Even better, people who are sharing their own cars are finding they can make hundreds of dollars a month from a vehicle that wasn’t being used very often.

Savannah is no doubt one of the best walking cities in the country, and quickly becoming a great place to bike around as well. But, we all still need a car from time to time for those inevitable trips to other parts of town, to Tybee, or even across the river. Car sharing holds the potential to get us where we need to, in a fun, efficient, 21st century, “buy local” kind of way.

It’s just like kindergarten all over again, except with better toys and fewer temper tantrums.

Kevin

I’ve been in Savannah just about seven years now, and from my own perspective, through the lens of my work in real estate, primarily downtown, I can see just how much progress this city has made, and on the other hand, what feels like stagnation. Many of us would like to see this town get a little hipper, a little edgier, a little artsier, and just a little more bustling. Naturally, it would be nice if the creative community provided some more of the bustle.

From the time I arrived in August 2006, our real estate market, following a national trend, has been on a downward trajectory, coupled with the global economic crisis. You may have heard a little something about that these past few years. And yet, even as prices were plummeting, foreclosures were rising, and people in general were feeling the gloom and doom, I saw houses around downtown being renovated, new houses being built, and new businesses coming into existence. My brokerage, Keller Williams Realty, has grown from around 30 agents in one office on the Southside in late 2006, when I joined, to 200 agents, with three additional offices in Richmond Hill, Pooler, and my home office downtown, all during the worst real estate market in decades. So I can tell you good things can happen during bad times, if you figure out the right way to run your business, and you figure out what people are looking for. Had anyone heard of Tumblr or Square in 2008, when the economic crisis hit? It seems to me they’ve done pretty well lately, with the former having just sold for $1 billion and the latter valued somewhere around $3 billion.

I’d like to point something out here. Neither Keller Williams, nor Tumblr, nor Square created the wheel, nor did they reinvent the wheel. In the case of Keller Williams, we ran a business with solid fundamentals, we educated our agents, we treated our buyers and sellers with respect and educated them to the reality of the market shift, and business grew while nearly everyone else’s in Savannah’s decreased. That’s not to brag—it is simply meant to illustrate that we concentrated on the fundamentals, and the fundamentals worked. We didn’t “create” more buyers and sellers—we thrived by increasing our market share in a declining market.

In the case of Tumblr, I’m not a user, follower, or expert by any means, but I think it’s fair to say it offers a version of what Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram offer (to also be fair, unlike just about every other mainstream social networking site, Tumblr also has a major pornography component, and as anyone who knows anything about the internet can tell you, pornography is a major revenue driver of the internet. Let’s all be honest here). And Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram offer what the old AOL and MySpace offered. It’s all repackaged, reimagined, and I would say better, in terms of being more attractive and more efficient, but it’s all the same information being shared. Square is just a way to make it easier to do something we’d all already been doing, using credit cards. The opportunity to make the payments using a mobile phone is where the opportunity was. Again, you figure out what people are doing or need, and you offer a value proposition. Make it quicker, easier, and more attractive, and you have something.

But of course it hasn’t all been roses these past few years. I mentioned stagnation earlier, and the flip side to the aforementioned new businesses is the churn of spaces that cannot seem to support a viable business. It’s hard to imagine a business plan that doesn’t account for having a year’s worth of reserves, and yet, we’ve all seen places that opened and closed in short time, to be followed by another business that similarly failed to gain traction. Sometimes, you can blame the location, but we all know restaurants that have less than prime spots that are doing well. Some businesses in outlying areas are helping to recreate those areas. That’s the idea. For the entrepreneurs out there, I would recommend studying Savannah’s successes and figuring out how and why they got to be successful. I would bet, despite the differences in décor, menu, and merchandise, that the formula for success includes a heavy dose of the basics—value, attention to detail, and customer service.

That said, a rising tide lifts all boats, and as the economy continues to improve, it will help all of Savannah’s businesses. But we cannot let ourselves be sucked in again to the mistakes that were made when the economy was flourishing—that ANY business will be successful, that ANY house will sell (at ANY price). We may never see those outrageously good times again, and that might be the best thing for us. Let’s not hang our hopes on perpetual good times—let’s follow the example of the businesses that bucked the trend and succeeded when others were shutting their doors. Let’s get back to the fundamentals, not just in our businesses, but in Savannah itself. We need to figure out the best way to sell this city, and I’ll reiterate the importance of value, attention to detail, and customer service; those can be civic, as well as business, values. Because Savannah is a brand, like any other, and when people see the value behind the brand, they will embrace the brand. And that, we all hope, will lead to the kind of success that is measured not just by a select few businesses that found the way to succeed. It will also be measured by the kind of civic and consumer growth that can encourage entrepreneurs to wow us with businesses offering value, attention, and customer service, and offering it in ways that we never thought possible.

Matthew

 

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A fairly common response to being “hard headed” is that it’s a negative term. Being called “hard-headed” is often used by someone trying to convince, or educate, or persuade someone else to do / say / stop something.

As an entrepreneur, I welcome the label “hard-headed” with open arms. I embrace my hard-headedness. It’s this stubborn stuck-in-my-way attitude that helps me push through times when what I’m doing makes no sense. This hard head is what drove me to start all past and current business ventures. Put another way, being hard-headed, or stubborn, allows me to ignore “reality” and strive to make my own. And periodically, when the difficulties of what I’m doing come crashing in on me (and a tiny voice tells me to scrap it all and go get a safe, comfortable job), hard-headedness keeps me going.

One clearly hard-headed entrepreneur summed up the benefit to being stubborn beautifully-

“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” – Thomas Edison

All entrepreneurs seem to share the ability to deny reality to some extent. Someone called it a reality distortion field and that sounds about right. Being hard headed is one of the attributes that allows startup founders to create something from nothing. It’s an important part of my makeup but as I’ve discovered in the last couple of months, this apparent benefit is not without a cost.

When I was growing up self-sufficiency was a matter of survival. I learned at a young age to rely on myself and that if something was going to get done, or changed, I’d have to do it. I became a doer out of necessity and hard headed as a result. But this self-reliance has been a trap too. Being self sufficient is not a skill that bodes well for having rich relationships, especially marriage. Luckily (Divinity actually) I married a dedicated and patient woman who helped me see the benefit of depending on others.

Being hard-headed, and self sufficient, makes asking for help, or admitting you don’t know something, very, very difficult. And in turn, it also creates a destructive internal dialog because you end up beating yourself up over the fact that you don’t know everything. Not being able to solve a problem or see a solution is frustrating. Plain and simple, this is Pride rearing its ugly head. And I’ve had to come face-to-face with it in myself these last few months as I worked through the feeling of a business that seemed stuck.

Once I realized I had a problem needing to be solved (this feeling of being stuck), I resorted to my standard approach. In typical fashion, I ignored my prideful attitude, determined I could get myself unstuck if I just read more, thought more, worked through finding a solution, etc. Surely I did not need anyone to help me get past this! But alas my efforts succeeded in pushing me deeper into the internal conversation about why I could not get myself out of the rut. My focus on solving my own problem seemed to only make it worse. Out of desperation, I began asking for help.

First, I started talking to my peers. Slowly some cracks in my hard head began letting in small morsels of wisdom. Oddly, those bits of input from a select few took the form of questions, helping me reframe my issue. These small outside influences shook me from my reality distortion field long enough to realize I needed to break down and really ask for help. As in professional help.

So I did. I needed help. I asked not for psychological help (although in the past I’m sure many folks would have prescribed that!), but professional help. By that I mean a consultant. A person whose job is helping people like me frame the question and walk through (together) finding the answer(s).

This decision was incredibly hard. Hard personally, because I had to admit to myself I did not know the answer, and hard financially because I was going to pay this person to help.

And here’s where the story pauses because its end is being written as you read this. I’ve not solved some of my challenges. I still have questions and I’m still very hard headed. But I see now where my stubborn, self-sufficient attitude is best applied. And importantly, I see when to turn it off and ask for wisdom from those around me.

So if you find yourself feeling stuck, ask for help.

If you are really stuck, be prepared to ask for and pay for help. Don’t waste time trying to save yourself; there are many cases where you can’t. Stop being stubborn, just for a little while, and go get help. Like me, you’ve got lots to do and wasting time figuring out why you can’t figure something out is chasing your tail.

And don’t fret:  You’ll step back into your reality distortion field soon enough. Frankly, my hard-headedness may be without equal. And if wisdom can penetrate my reality distortion field, you most certainly have hope!

Rad

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